"Hofmann’s late work continued a seamless evolution from previous lines of development… His earlier involvement with color, shape, composition and meaning now found new vehicles of expression, but did not change course. Instead, these new elements now attained an even more irresistible synthesis."
Stunning in its intensity of hue and mastery of stroke, Hans Hofmann’s Golden Glow is a prismatic example of the painterly genius that established the artist as one of the most influential icons of the post-war period. Set on an impressive scale, the present work offers a composition of dazzling chromatic vitality, assembled from saturated slabs of color in thick impasto, producing a dynamic surface that is rich in both visual and textural details. Painted in 1965, only a year before the artist’s death, this work embodies the coloristic values at the heart of Hofmann’s prodigious life's work. A radiant array of color breaks through a sea of demanding red in rich, dynamic strokes, while a sonorous green rectangle grounds the work in a rhythmic order signature of Hofmann’s celebrated style. The present work was exhibited at New York’s Kootz Gallery in the spring of 1965 in The Final Show of the 1964-65 Season, continuing Hofmann’s long, influential partnership with one of the champions of Abstract Expressionism of the twenty first century, art dealer and critic Samuel M. Kootz.
Imbued with an atmospheric intensity in deceptively simplified forms, Golden Glow’s saturated chromatic slabs strike the canvas in bursts of thick impasto. Illusionistic space and representational imagery are abandoned in favor of a dramatic graphic arrangement of saturated marks within both structured geometric planes and free painterly strokes, which come together with clarity and originality. Achieving a spectacular outburst of dynamism within contained geometric compartments, Golden Glow stands as an exemplar of the artist’s late paintings. Exemplified in the present work, Hofmann developed his singular style, in part, during his long and deeply influential teaching career, during which he counted Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner and Louise Nevelson among his students. Irving Sandler had suggested that “Hofmann may have derived the idea of using rectangles in his painting from one of his teaching techniques: attaching pieces of construction paper to the canvases of his students” (Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism, New York, 1970, p. 147, note 5). In these last years of his life, Hofmann’s distinguished oeuvre arrives at a harmonious summation of his unique artistic vision, with works like Golden Glow emerging as a testament to his brilliance.
Executed during this mature period of Hofmann’s oeuvre, Golden Glow exemplifies the artist’s signature “push-pull” synthesis, a theory he initially developed in the 1950’s. Within the present work, a starkly geometric yet luminous green plane intersects a sea of dazzling red and deeper browns, drawing the viewer in with the entrancing interplay of form and color.. Explaining the nature of this phenomenon in 1963 Hofmann explained: "push and pull is a colloquial expression applied for movement experienced in nature or created on the picture surface to detect the counterplay of movement in and out of the depth. Depth perception in nature and depth creation on the picture-surface is the crucial problem in pictorial creation." (Hans Hofmann quoted in: Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art (and traveling), Hans Hofmann, 1990, p. 177) Drawing on his skills as an expert colorist, Hofmann’s compositions utilize varying hues to incite movement and create immense visual depth.
"Push and pull is a colloquial expression applied for movement experienced in nature or created on the picture surface to detect the counterplay of movement in and out of the depth. Depth perception in nature and depth creation on the picture-surface is the crucial problem in pictorial creation."
Hofmann’s rise to prominence within the New York art scene of the twentieth century would not have been possible without the support of critics and gallerists who were invested in the Abstract Expressionist movement. As Hofmann’s work progressed in the 30’s and 40’s, it was his partnership with Samuel M. Kootz that allowed his work to surface among the flourishing New York avant-garde scene. By 1947, Hofmann began to exhibit his work annually in both solo and group exhibitions at Kootz Gallery in a series of shows that document the exponential artistic growth of Hofmann’s later years. Paul Moorhouse has stipulated: “As these shows demonstrated, in many respects Hofmann’s late work continued a seamless evolution from previous lines of development… His earlier involvement with color, shape, composition and meaning now found new vehicles of expression, but did not change course. Instead, these new elements now attained an even more irresistible synthesis” (Paul Moorhouse, “The Structure of Imagination: Hofmann’s Late Paintings,” Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Volume I, pp.55-56). An exemplar of this late creative prowess, Golden Glow delivers the summation of Hofmann’s vision, drawing together the sum of his extraordinary experience into a canvas of alluring vitality.
